In 1846, French Canadian-born A. M. A. Blanchet was named the first
Catholic bishop of Walla Walla in the area soon to become Washington
Territory. He arrived at Fort Walla Walla in late September 1847, part
of the largest movement over the Oregon Trail to date. During the
thirty-two years of Blanchet's tenure in the Northwest, the region
underwent profound social and political change as the Hudson's Bay
Company moved headquarters and many operations north following the
Oregon Treaty, U.S. government and institutions were established, and
Native American inhabitants dealt with displacement and discrimination.
Blanchet chronicled both his own pastoral and administrative life and
his observations on the world around him in a voluminous
correspondence-almost nine hundred letters-to religious superiors and
colleagues in Montreal, Paris, and Rome; funding organizations; other
missionaries; and U.S. officials. This selection of Blanchet's
letters provides a fascinating view of Washington Territory as seen
through the eyes of an intelligent, devout, energetic, perceptive, and
occasionally irascible cleric and administrator.